Chris Hedges on ‘The Pathology of the Rich’

Posted on Dec 6, 2013

The Real News Network

Truthdig columnist Chris Hedges discussed “the psychology of the super rich: their sense of entitlement, the dehumanization of workers, and mistaken belief that their wealth will insulate them from the coming storms” with The Real News Network’s senior editor, Paul Jay.

Of the conditions that shape the thinking and values of the rich, Hedges said:

“The rich are different, because when you have that much money, then human beings become disposable. Even friends and family become disposable and are replaced. And when the rich take absolute power, then the citizens become disposable, which is in essence what’s happened. There is a very callous indifference.

“I mean, these people—and C. Wright Mills wrote about this in ‘The Power Elite’—they’re utterly cut off. I mean, the only people they ever meet who are members of the working class are people who work for them—their gardeners or their chauffeurs. They live in self-encased bubbles. They have no real contact with reality. I mean, they don’t even fly on commercial airlines. And yet they have absolute power.

“Now, that becomes very dangerous politically because they’re so out of touch and they are able to retreat into their enclaves in the same way that you saw in France under Louis XVI, people retreating to Versailles, or the end of the Chinese dynasty when everybody went to the Forbidden City.”